"On January 9, 1993, Jean-Claude Romand killed his wife, his children, his parents, and then tried in vain to kill himself. The investigation revealed that he was not the doctor he claimed to be and, even more difficult to believe, that he was nothing else. He had been lying for eighteen years, and the lie covered up nothing. Close to being discovered, he preferred to suppress those whose gaze he couldn't bear anymore. I came into contact with him and attended his trial. I tried to recount precisely, day by day, this life of solitude, imposture and absence. To imagine what was going on in his head during the empty hours, with no plans or witnesses, that he was supposed to spend at work and actually spent in freeway parking lots or in the forests of the Jura region. To understand, finally, what in such an extreme human experience touched me so closely and touches, I believe, each and every one of us."

L'Adversaire, published in 2000, is one of the best-known novels by French writer Emmanuel Carrère (b. 1957). Intrigued by a sordid news story, the author decides to meet the criminal whose murderous ways and double life seem incomprehensible. From one lie to the next, a whole unspoken and unavowable life is recounted in this breathtaking tale of a murder as inhuman as it is incomprehensible: a borderline experience. Driven by a desire to understand and explain, Carrère develops a story on the edge of reason and reasonableness, somewhere between detective story, investigative journalist and autofiction. A novel as terrifying as it is captivating.